would die. The conclusion of this ceremony was a grand dance, of a peculiar character, in which the boys join, and which the women are allowed to see. This dance is performed with much more solemnity than the ordinary corrobborees. The Yarra-Hapinni tribe, which I saw execute this dance near the Clybucca Creek, were so elaborately painted with white for the occasion, that even their very toes and fingers were carefully and regularly colored with concentric rings, whilst their hair was drawn up in a close knot, and stuck all over with the snowy down of the white cockatoo, which gave them the appearance of being decorated with white wigs.[1] In this dance the performers arranged themselves in the form of a semicircle, and grasping the ends of their boomerangs, which are also painted with great minuteness and regularity, they swayed their bodies rapidly from right to left, displaying a degree of flexibility in their limbs which might have created the envy of many a pantomimic artist. Every movement of their bodies to and fro was accompanied by a loud hiss; whilst a number of other natives, similarly painted, beat time with sticks, and kept up an incessant and obstreperous song. Every now and then the dancers would stop and rush, crowding together, into a circle, raising their weapons with outstretched arms, and joining with frantic energy in the song. They would then be more composed, and walk backwards and forwards in couples, holding each other by the hand, until agaiu roused by an elderly native to resume the dance. It was not until midnight that the noise ceased, which, every evening, whilst the ceremonies lasted, might be heard at a distance of two or three miles. The tribes of natives near Sydney, where the boys are always deprived of their front teeth, do not seem to be so averse to the whites witnessing their ceremonies, which differ considerably from what I have just described.
"In their mode of going through the ceremony, the boys being assembled together, and the whole tribe mustered for the occasion, a party of men, armed and painted, advanced into the Cawarra ground, with loud shouts and clattering of their arms, and seized, one by one, the boys who were to undergo the operation. The latter were then placed together on the Cawarra ground, where they were to pass the night in perfect silence. In the meantime the other natives danced and sang furiously, whilst the doctors, or 'coradjes,' went through a most ridiculous scene, groaning, and contorting themselves in every position, until they at length pretended to be delivered of some bones, which were subsequently used to cut open the gums of the boys before striking out their teeth. Next day the boys were brought into the centre of the Cawarra ground, whilst the other blacks performed various ridiculous antics around them, in imitation of various animals. Sticking their boomerangs vertically in their opossum-skin belts, so as to bear some resemblance to the tail of the native dog, they ran on all-fours past the boys, throwing up dust, whilst the latter remained motionless, with downcast eyes. They next fastened to their girdles long pieces of twisted grass, to resemble the tail of the kangaroo, and then bounded round the boys in imitation of the movement of that animal, whilst others pretended to spear them.
- ↑ The natives of the Port Lincoln district, when about to engage in the corrobboree, sometimes decorate their heads with wreaths made of white birds' down.
